


An Element of Blank (it cannot recollect)

by wanderlustlover



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Ineedmyfics Exchange 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt 'Nathan Wournous – Pain, emotional & physical.' </p><p>Set pre-series, with background references from several episodes including "The Pilot,” “Butterfly," "Business as Usual," and "Sins of the Father." Title, and stanzas from Emily Dickinson's Part One: Life poem XIX.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Element of Blank (it cannot recollect)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TanyaReed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanyaReed/gifts), [r_lee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/gifts), [Weaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaver/gifts).



>   
> **_The First Time;_ **
> 
> _It has no future but itself,_  
>  _Its infinite realms contain_

He will never forget the way Lisa Buck screamed. The way everything else in the world stood still. 

The way that scream echoed throughout the hillside, sending the last of the winter birds, not scared by the squealing of sledding children, far into the distance, cawing their displeasure at being so rudely startled. How he’d looked behind himself and around, for whatever must have terrified her so suddenly, and first found nothing.

The sound of her puking that started just as the sounds of others running toward them was breaking through. That was all Nathan knew before his eyes found the bone sticking out of his jacket. That was the more confusing part at first. That there was a bone sticking out of his jacket. One that obviously couldn’t be, shouldn’t be sticking out of his skin, no less his jacket.

How he felt nothing. No. That wasn’t actually true. How he felt nauseous listening to the sound of the girl throwing up and the birds fleeing, his heart suddenly speeding up from his chest, into his throat. How nothing hurt, but he felt dizzy with confusion, his vision going blurry with panic that he wouldn’t until much later realize was a combination of shock and massive blood loss.

He passed out long before the paramedics came.

But not before Lisa Buck had stumbled away still sobbing, and others had taken her place.

He’d counted things through the rest of that day. Not being able to feel his feet or the sheets, or the mattress underneath. How he could watch his hand against the metal of the hospital bed, but no matter how hard he pressed, even when his skin turned red and then white with pressure, he couldn’t feel a single thing.

The worst moment were the torments of his own heart. When he was conscious again, amid sleeping his father said was due to painkillers, which made no sense when he couldn’t feel any pain no matter how swollen or bound his arm ended up. He remembered with almost as much severity as the first few seconds, the first time his mother had wished him a goodnight.

The way she’d leaned down, how clear the smell of her perfume was – flowers, several flowers, and something a little sharper, like a lemon or an orange – before she’d stopped leaning forward. When his heart gave a sharp, knife-sharp, leap and dive at the same time, because, with his eyes open, he could see that she’d stopped moving because she was kissing his forehead. But he couldn’t feel anything at all. Which shook him harder and deeper than everything else.

Reaching into his guts where the only things he could feel were emotions unspooling in the biggest endless lake, with no edges where he once had skin. An ocean of fighting, flailing, uncaged feelings where he floated utterly alone, bound only by what he could see, with no single sense of feeling left. A feeling like drowning and washing out to sea so solid, so adrift, so alone, from even his parents who never left his side.

It wasn’t until morning he discovered his arms dotted in purple finger shaped bruises, no more felt than the tree he crashed his sled into or his mothers’ lips. Where he’d held his own arms so tight, through the night, certain if he prayed hard enough, promised not to do anything bad ever again, grasped himself hard enough, he’d come back.

* * *

  


>   
> 
> 
> __  
> **The Second Time;**  
> 
> 
> _Its past, enlightened to perceive  
>  New periods_

Water under the bridge: that is what a lot of people called childhood. 

Nathan Wournos, as one of the children plagued by The Troubles, had more than his fair share of them all. Tacks  
shoved in his back. Learning not to bite his tongue or burn his fingers only through error and everything through  
ER visits. He had more cuts and fractures than most of his grade school classes combined. They called it idiopathic  
neuropathy, but everyone knew what it really was. y

When it passed, he put it behind him as fast as he could. Didn’t question the miracle of how, only embraced the  
ability to feel everything again from the texture of just griddled pancakes to weight of his clothes, the giddiness  
even of the embarrassing moments of accidentally poking himself with his badge the first few times. But like  
everything in glut, he took it for granted long before the never he swore as a child.

He’ll never forget the call that came from Duke.

That was water under the bridge, too. Duke Crocker and his rag tag band of cronies who all followed in his wake.  
The cool kid, who was only that because he mouthed off, and because his father was the town drunkard. The kid  
who made his life a living hell. Phoning it back in about wanting to clear the air and set straight the past, setting  
right the wrongs of childhood, nearly two decades later, after he sailed back into port like he was the second  
coming.

It hadn’t taken long to figure out the ruse. Past the Devil May Care rakish smile that loitered across the man’s  
mouth, even more a laughing sneer than when they were teenagers, and the oily shoulder bump, with a beer hand  
out. Making every single impulse in Nathan’s head read wrong, read off. But he’d left the badge behind that day. In  
the car.

Even after The Chief had scoffed and supplied his thoughts on Duke being a cost better lost on Haven.

Somehow he’d still wanted to believe. That Duke Crocker might have regretted his childhood ills and wanted some  
kind of reconciliation. He’d wanted to hear him out, drink his beer, and see if the world was wrong and you really

could change the past into something better. Right up until he figured it out, figured out he was being used. For his  
badge, for his status as a cop, as a cover for the Coast Guard.

When twenty years of some combination of unfailing naiveté, pride and fury combined in him throwing the first  
punch. Something he’d never have done as a kid. Never had the balls to do, except because he was good at his job,  
trained well in how to fight. He’d never not respected the uniform, the badge, the Chief, his men. He’d been proud  
of it, and until that moment, it’d remained unsullied.

Until he let Duke Crocker put his hands on it. The first time he’d asked, without even blinking. Like a putz.

Round and round that he’d laid into the man’s face, and any other part he could reach, while deflecting anything  
thrown his way like it was nothing. The emotions so strong that it took him a good long time to realize. Feeling  
so taken advantage of at the time, blowing straight into the number of ways he’d been taken advantage of in his  
childhood.

That every blow and shove that came his way seemed never touched him because they never hurt him at all. That  
somewhere in the emotional overflow, the world had changed again. Like a light going on and a light going off all  
at once, without any warning, and without any more idea where the switch was than anyone had ever had before.


End file.
